Your Working Day is Someone's Working Week

Working in TV is often very long hours, especially as a runner, your working day can easily be 16 hours long thats someone's working week. If you add in travel time them you can easily be hitting 20 hours a day.

Up at 6am, drive to work, stand, carry, drive, and shop all day then tidy up before your drive home. Arrive home for 11pm and bed ready for the same again tomorrow. Its a never ending cycle until you work up the ladder and even then depending on the path you have taken and the job you are working on the hours might not change.

When you start as a runner the wages are poor and you often find yourself taking on other jobs just to get by and saying no to a job often means the phone doesn't ring again. So the need to succeed in the industry spurs you through.

Not long after I started I was doing just this, luckily all my jobs turned out to be in the same building so I didn't have to travel between workplaces. if I had I dont think I would have been able to do it, I only just survived as it was.

Living off Flavia Coffee

My working week started on a Thursday morning at 7.30am and finished on a Tuesday evening at 7pm. During this time I was working on three separate programmes and living off Flavia coffee machines and RedBull.

My Thursday first shift was a regular one. And I was used to the long day and standing. Then there was a call to work on an evening show that was live and ran throughout the night. As long as my normal job was finished by 10pm I couldn't see why I couldn't do both.

So the first Thursday started and I finished my day job by 9pm, nipped back to the car park and sat in my car for an hour then started my evening shift. this was an easy shift in TV runner terms as it only meant carrying all the stuff to studio, setting up the green room and keeping everyone supplied with drinks. The show finished at 3am. Home for a couple of hours sleep and then back for the same again on Friday.

Then Ugly Betty called, they desperately needed an extra pair of hands on a new show they where making and the shifts fitted in around my other jobs so I agreed.

Regularly found asleep in a Chesterfield 

This added a Saturday to Tuesday 9am -7pm onto my other jobs. Knackered isn't the word. I could regularly be found hiding backstage in my down time asleep in a chesterfield, or hidden behind the lift dozing in a chair.

The great thing about the evening stint is that everyone looked after themselves after it was all set up, and so I could easily sneak off for 40 winks. Upstairs on route to the studio the lift opened up in the centre of the room, with mirrors all around. This meant you could sit on a chair behind the lift and when the lift made a noise it would wake you, you could then scan the room to see who was coming as to whether you had to move or could stay hidden away and close your eyes again.

I really dont recommend it to anyone after the shoot had finished 6 weeks later I was fit for nothing. Although the extra money was good, it didn't really further my career. and that is what you have to ask yourself. Is it worth it? Will it get me further along the media Path I want to take. If the answer is no then let another runner take the job. You dont know what opportunities you will miss by taking the work, when the call could come in offering something you really want to do.